FEMA is planning for an earthquake that would devastate the Pacific Northwest, killing at least 13,000 people

Portland
and other areas of the Pacific Northwest would be unrecognizable
if the earthquake hits as hard as predicted.flickr/R0Ng

To the north of California's famous San Andreas fault is a less
known, but possibly more deadly, fault line. The Cascadia
subduction zone runs some 700 miles from northern California to
Vancouver.

In
a deeply reported article for The New Yorker, Kathryn
Schulz tells the tale of how this fault lies dormant for periods
of 243 years, on average, before unleashing monstrous tremors.
The Pacific Northwest is 72 years overdue for the next quake,
which is expected to be between 8.0 and 9.2 in magnitude.

At the upper end of that scale, Schulz notes, we would experience
"the worst natural disaster in the history of North
America." (The major 2011 earthquake in Japan was a
9.0, killing more
than 15,000 people.)

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) already has an
emergency response plan for when this earthquake hits. Parts of
FEMA's quake expectations are truly terrifying. As Schulz writes:

FEMA projects that nearly thirteen thousand people will die in
the Cascadia earthquake and tsunami. Another twenty-seven
thousand will be injured, and the agency expects that it will
need to provide shelter for a million displaced people, and food
and water for another two and a half million.

These projections are based on a scenario that has the earthquake
striking at 9:41 a.m. February 6. (The agency isn't trying to
predict the future or saying that the earthquake will definitely
occur then, they just need a date to plan around.) The toll would
be far higher on a warm day, when more people — often huge crowds
of people — are at the beach or in the water.

When the quake does occur, its severe effects and the impacts of
the following tsunami ("It will look like the whole ocean,
elevated, overtaking land") will be felt all the way from Canada
to Sacramento, in densely populated cities like Seattle and
Portland.

What's more, the Pacific Northwest is not earthquake ready.
Buildings aren't retrofitted properly and there aren't many
effective emergency warning systems or escape plans in place.

The aftermath will be devastating. Schulz writes:

By the time the shaking has ceased and the tsunami has receded,
the region will be unrecognizable. Kenneth
Murphy, who directs FEMA's Region X, the division responsible for
Oregon, Washington, Idaho, and Alaska, says, "Our operating
assumption is that everything west of Interstate 5 will be
toast."